The Three Faces of Truth

Like the Christian God, Truth had three distinct "faces" that are presented to us according to our ability to "see" and understand.

The first and most commonly perceived face of truth is what most people might call factual truth. But, it could also be called perceptual truth, or apparent truth. This is the first and most obvious face of reality itself that we all perceive through our various senses. The sky, the earth, our bodies, the air we breath; these are all perceived, or factual, truths.

It is in the face of factual truth that the vast majority of people live their lives. It is an ignorant and extremely limited view of existence, and thus we sometimes recognize it as the "small minded" reality in others, but seldom within ourselves. And yet, it is from this "little world" of factual truth that we judge each other, and end up judging ourselves. People tend to hide behind their precious facts, and use them to conceal the greater truths that typically terrify them.

Most of the "greater truths" (though they are only arguably "greater", as we shall see in a moment) exist in light of the second face of the truth, called relative truth.

Everyone knows about the "relative truth", but few understand it, and far fewer have ever managed to embrace it. This is the face of truth that tells us plainly that there is no right or wrong, good or evil, up or down; because everything exists only in relation to everything else. The relative face of truth knows for example that time itself exist only in relation to space. Time cannot and does not exist in the absence of space, nor can an evil human exist in the absence of good humans (and vice versa).

One way to better understand the difference between factual truth and relative truth is to consider how people use them to interact. Dishonest and deluded people use the factual truth to lie to other people and themselves all the time. They commonly even think of themselves as "honest" people because of their insistence on speaking only the factual truth. Christians, politicians, and lawyers usually rely on this form of deception. It is the "safe bet", and the "wide road", which is heavily defended by state, social and religious laws that are always violently enforced lest the relative truth be known.

A person who recognizes the face and value of relative truth will appear to "speak in riddles" as they strive to be more honest and respectful of the truth in general. Such a person is more interested in what their words actually convey, rather than what they say. They strive to come out from behind their words, rather than hide behind them. Their words, when taken out of context, the way lawyers, Christians and politicians love to do, appear contradictory and nonsensical. But, in context they express the relative nature of truth, and end up being more honest, even when they are factually not true.

When an honest person is confronted they might say, "but, that's not what I meant". While a less honest person will typically insist, "but, that's not what I SAID!". An honest person uses words to EXPRESS the truth, a dishonest person uses words to DEFINE it. (A careful reader might note that this is all extremely consistent with what I have written in the past about our "deception based justice system" and helps explain why such a system can only end up bringing more pain and suffering into our world, even as it claims to bring less - i.e. it's words are empty "factual" shells that do little more than conceal the relative truth of our reality that it is necessary for us to understand if we ever want to stop ignorantly causing ourselves and others to suffer.)

And finally there is the face of Absolute Truth, which I really can't say too much about because it is by definition and by necessity an indescribable truth. The Absolute Truth though is the ultimate source of all other truth. You could say it is the greatest truth of all, but you can't really compare and grade the faces of truth like that. They are each unique and crucial to the experience we call reality. And, our world, any world for that matter, could not exist without all of them together, nor could any of the faces of truth exist without all of the faces as One. I believe this to be the mystery of the Trinity that Christian's so often misrepresent (by trying to define and confine their truth with the so-called "word of God" that to an honest person is so obviously only the words of men). I also believe that all living beings are born with an understanding of the faces of truth, and how they represent the same One Being; but men, we humans, the "fallen ones", are taught to ignore and eventually forget what we knew so naturally as children.

The "prayer" in my own life (i.e. the ultimate driving principle) has always been, and yet remains, to see a day when we all remember what we have been trained to forget. Even when I was so badly deceived myself by the world of perceptions and factual reality.

I think that if a deceived man lives in the world of factual truths, and an honest man in a world of relative truths, then an enlightened man must live in the world of Absolute Truth, from which it is plain for him to see that ultimately there is only One Truth, and deception itself - death itself - is nothing more than a shadow of the truth - a shadow of life - and certainly nothing to be afraid of.

(J.D. January 28, 2015)